


The Flavor of Dust

by MumblingSage



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Asexual Character, Canon Compliant, Cunnilingus, F/M, First Time, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Grief/Mourning, Multiple Orgasms, Oral Sex, Platonic Sex, Rough Sex, Tenderness, Vulnerability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 17:50:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4109692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MumblingSage/pseuds/MumblingSage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not a kiss so much as biting, teeth catching lips, sharp and quick. The warmth of her mouth is like a spark. It sets something into a motion, a concussive shock racing along his nerves. It’s not a kiss so much as an indication of intentions.<br/>“This all right with you?” she asks.<br/>She knows it is—he wouldn’t have returned the kiss otherwise—but to indicate intention, too, he nods and gives a grunt of assent. Her hand folds against him, almost grasping. At once he understands what she needs.  Not distraction—you couldn’t distract yourself from something like this—but a way to wring out nervous energy. Wearing off, blanking out, letting exhaustion win over agitation. She can’t lie still. And yes, he understands that. He can feel the stillness, too. Sex wouldn’t be his first choice of how to deal with it, but by now he’s used to being what she needs. He wants to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Flavor of Dust

**Author's Note:**

> In which I take my oral fixation to the Wasteland. 
> 
> A few other content notes: canon-typical grossness in the first scene (sorry), bi Furiosa (you're welcome), implications of tragic backstory (well of course), femdom if you squint (oh yes). I hope you all enjoy :D

She had told him to get some rest, and Max lets his head fall against the seat back, but he doesn’t fall asleep again. Not all the way. He closes his eyes and her words echo in his skull, ringing but not unpleasant. _Hope. Redemption._ He’s past hoping for redemption—that, and the struggle not to remember in the fight for clear blank thoughtlessness, are the full extent of his thinking. He closes his eyes and the morning light pressing through the lids looks like fire, like blood…

He listens to the growl of the engines, the howl of the wind, the gritty rumble of wheels. His right ear still rings, fainter now than it had last night but not faint enough; he’s not sure if it’ll ever stop. It almost chimes, musical. His body, or maybe just his mind, vibrates for a moment in memory of the concussive shock of her firing, as if in delayed reaction. _Don’t breathe_. He hadn’t.

He does now, sending a stream of heat slowly towards his lungs. That had been the second time she’d fired close enough to make his ears ring. The first time she’d been aiming to kill. Missed. Before that—he remembers, and it’s still better than whatever else he’s trying not to remember—the dusty iron muzzle at his chin and dry _click_ as she pulled the trigger. If he had threatend them with a working gun, he’d be dead. But he hadn’t and he isn’t.

Rustling movement in the back seat. Low murmuring. The others are waking up. He doesn’t open his eyes until the air beside him goes still, held with the silent weight that means she’s looking at him.

And by the time he does, Furiosa has already turned back to the wheel. A hand reaches from the back seat, Cheedo’s, offering a small leather bag. Peering inside, he makes out its contents: a single, wrinkled, dust-orange medallion.

Part of him, the part surprised when he awoke this morning without the dark, without confinement, with nothing checking the instinctive upward jerk of his hand, the part that still watches and emerges sometimes to cast a pall of lucid suspicion, notices the strange smell of the thing and questions why he’s being offered it. If they haven’t found an easier way to be rid of him than a gun to his skull.

The greater part of him realizes that a gun to the skull would have been equally easy while he slept, and the women and the War Boy in back are all chewing on whatever it is—the War Boy, at least, they’d surely have gotten rid of before him—and food, however strange it is, is not something to waste in a killing stroke. This part also notices the enthusiasm of the chewing and recognizes an effort has been made to save whatever-this-is for him.

With an acknowledging mumble, he reaches into the bag. The thing has a leathery surface, somewhat sticky, and its strange smell isn’t unfamiliar. Juicy, sunlight-and-water, it brings memories of a glimpse of green—through iron bars, a passing glimpse awash in desperation and…other memories. Despite that, it isn’t unpleasant.

The Citadel didn’t share its luxuries with bloodbags, so he isn’t completely prepared for the first bite. A rush of water to his mouth seems like a sign he’s going to be sick, that even if it isn’t poisoned it’s just too different, too much. But he swallows hard, and then the rush of flavor is only intense. It tastes— _good_.

Sweet, he identifies after a moment. That’s what it is.

He bites the dried fruit almost in half and runs his tongue along the groove from his teeth, just tasting, savoring the flood of sweetness. In the mirror he catches Toast watching him, smiling around the toothpick already replaced in her mouth. After chewing the slice apart, he holds the last bit in his mouth until it dissolves.

And then it’s gone. He can’t remember the last time he ate something that was once green and he doesn’t look forward to doing it again. That seems too unlikely. But he’s glad the sweetness is so cloying, that it doesn’t vanish with the dust under their wheels.

Several klicks later, something flies in through one of the broken windows. It buzzes around until it settles too close to the wheel. Then Furiosa’s right hand comes down, snapping it with a sound that causes a flinch from one of them in the backseat.

She unfolds her fingers and holds it out to him. A dark curl in a smear of black, long legs bent, carapace broken. Even now he has some instinct to recoil, as if resurrected by the previous more pleasant mouthful, but another instinct overrides it. Sensing the source of iron and protein and well aware of how much he needs that.

“You’ve got to replace your blood,” she says, a little softly, as if embarrassed by the nature of her generosity.

It crunches. Dust clings to the fine hairs on its legs and turns muddy with the saliva in his mouth, but the flavor of dust is nothing new to him. He bites down and swallows as quickly as possible. It tastes—he tries not to think about how it tastes. He’s used to eating mindlessly; it’s not so hard.

She licks what’s left of it from her palm and keeps on driving.

Perhaps there will be orchards in the Green Place. If it is all they say, that even seems likely.

But there aren’t and it isn’t—it doesn’t even exist anymore—and their journey ends in a basin of nothing in the dust. Her journey to redemption ends in a solitary, sobbing scream. Max watches. It’s all he can do.

It shouldn’t matter, it shouldn’t even be a shock. Of course the good doesn’t last. Whatever is good in the world is vanishing or gone, burned or washed away in blood. It was a mistake to hope otherwise. He had learned that lesson well and feels like worse than a fool for forgetting it. He watches her fall apart, and watches her slowly come back together, slowly let her head come forward and her shoulders rise straight and her legs unfold from the sand, and all the while failure burns in his throat, as if he should have warned her.

#

When it becomes too dark to continue work on the map, he unrolls a blanket from the back of the bike the Vuvalini have given him. Laid over sand, it’s softer than a cushion, and he uses a pack of supplies to rest his head on.

The problem is, he doesn’t need softness. He isn’t used to lying down to sleep. It feels unbalanced, as though his chest is too heavy and his body stretches out too long, too thin. Exposed, without the metal hide of a car surrounding him.

He’s about to climb into the War Rig and try to get some rest there when footsteps approach. He raises his head to see a shadow against the stars.

“Hey,” she says softly. “It’s me.”

Max gets to his feet. He doesn’t ask what she’s there for; she seems to be searching for the words to explain. He wonders if there’s been a change of plans. Then with a shrug she furls the blanket around her tighter, and he thinks it might be something else.

He had warned Furiosa that hope was a mistake. That if you failed to fulfill it you’d be driven insane. And she knows that he knows all about insanity.

(“ _You want that thing off your face?_ ”)

 _“She called you reliable,_ ” said the woman who had led him to the bike. Unsure if she had meant it as an explanation for the gift, or as thanks, or as an accusation—by then they already knew he didn’t plan to travel on with them—he’d only nodded and watched her walk off to rejoin the others. The Vuvalini had been gathered, their murmuring voices mixing with the sound of wind over the sand dunes, and Furiosa had been with them. Maybe planning the next day’s journey—the next one hundred and sixty days’ journey.

With the Green Place poisoned, they’ve gone from running _to_ somewhere to just running away. He could tell her how easily you could get used to that, but it wouldn’t be any comfort.

Maybe she was seeking comfort from the other women, from the plans they made. A way to fix what’s been broken.

But then what does she want from him now?

She takes a step nearer. And then another. She’s just a fraction taller, enough that when they stand this close to each other he has to angle his gaze up to meet hers. And they do meet, even in the dark; his eyes find an answering gleam only a little lower, a little duller than the stars. Now he can smell the scents clinging to her—oil, iron, grease, sweat. As she gets close enough for him to feel her breath, wet and warm, he realizes what she’s going for and leans forward to meet it despite his surprise.

It’s not a kiss so much as biting, teeth catching lips, sharp and quick. The warmth of her mouth is like a spark. It sets something into a motion, a concussive shock racing along his nerves. He misses how to breathe, caught up in trying to meet her tongue, and she slows down just enough for him to catch up. Even then she isn’t gentle, isn’t tender. It’s not a kiss so much as an indication of intentions. She’s dropped the blanket and her hand is on his chest, five fingertips pressing.

“This all right with you?” she asks.

She knows it is—he wouldn’t have returned the kiss otherwise—but to indicate intention, too, he nods and gives a grunt of assent. Her hand folds against him, almost grasping. Like her biting kiss, it communicates something more desperate than mere desire. At once he understands what she needs.

She’s lost a sense of purpose, but she still needs a sense of motion. Not distraction—you couldn’t _distract_ yourself from something like this—but a way to wring out nervous energy. Wearing off, blanking out, letting exhaustion win over agitation. She can’t lie still. And yes, he understands that. He can feel the stillness, too. The last time he was this still he was in a cage.

Sex wouldn’t be his first choice of how to deal with it, not one of his foremost needs, but by now he’s used to being what she needs. He wants to. All the same, the sheer hunger in her kiss doesn’t seem to have been meant for him.

He turns his head towards the others in a questioning jerk. The girls lie almost in a pile, close together on the sand, and the women too are…close. There’s no privacy out here so much as a sense of minding one’s own business, but he was too alert not to notice. Too alert, too, not to realize Furiosa could have found a place among them. The Valkyrie would have welcomed her, would have held her close and _known_ her.

But she follows his look and shakes her head, both of them reading each other’s movements by their shadowed outlines against the night sky. Maybe she asked. Maybe she feared ahead of time that it wouldn’t work out. By any route, he’s the one she’s come to, probably despite the fact that he’s a man, possibly because he’s a stranger. He doesn’t need to know her reasons to accept.

One of his hands goes to her waist while her hand grasps, pulls, and they bring their mouths together and they try to kiss. Gentler than biting this time. Lips fitting together, closing on each other, holding there. Very still. And it’s not bad, this stillness. Knowing he could make his next move at any moment, or she could, but for the moment, choosing not to.

 _Don’t breathe_.

His ears are ringing like there’s a siren going off in his head, but it isn’t an alarm. He breathes in slowly, through his nostrils, smelling her again, tasting the dryness on her lips. The kiss breaks. They both kneel on the blanket, facing each other, not uncertain but moving slowly all the same. Until suddenly she’s in action, stripping off her shirt one-handed with a grip from the nape of her neck. He reaches out once more. This time he seems to be _too_ slow for her, because she circles his wrist with her fingers and tugs it, bringing him to her skin. It’s his left hand, bandaged and still sore, so he winces when he presses too hard against her—then her grip lightens up, and she doesn’t try to guide how he moves.

It’s been a long time since he’s touched someone else, especially like this. Her body isn’t soft, sun- and wind-roughened, but it’s softer than anything else he can remember running his hands over. Firm muscle and scant breast tissue, which his fingers trace in sweeping circles that she seems to find pleasing; warm against the night air. Her nipples are already erect, perhaps from the cold as much as arousal. And despite the temperature, seeing her bare skin makes him want to be bare, too. He strips off his jacket and shirt so that they’re both naked to the waist. She skims his ribs as if exploring, curious; the sensation is almost ticklish.

She leans closer and his hands slide over her shoulders to her back. At the base of her neck, he finds the circle of the brand, and before he can wonder whether he should have touched it she’s shrugging in a way that encourages his fingers downward. Over more scars, skin corded or pitted where they healed. Over bruises with tenderness she winces at, short tremors passing as quickly as he moves on. The reaction is in its own way a luxury. They have time for it out here.

He goes back to her breasts, and her fingers circle over his skin in an echo. A way of feeling what she feels—he likes it, finds the feedback reassuring. Her heart is pounding strong enough for him to sense it beneath his fingertips, faster and faster, and her breathing accelerates, too. He’s almost prepared for when Furiosa takes her hand from him and begins to pull at her belt. She can easily remove it one-handed, but he helps her pull down her trousers, also wanting speed. Braced on her elbow, she leans back to make it easier for him. In the dark he bends closer than he needs to, close enough that his lips brush over her navel. At her rough sigh, an appreciative sound, he mouths at her again. He tastes the salt of her sweat and the fine powder of dust that gets everywhere, shifting through clothing and adding a rusty tinge and tang. A tremor that is not from wincing passes beneath his tongue.

He can tell when she sees his back by the way she goes still, the subtle rock of her hips between his hands stopping, and an indrawn breath sounding above. Even in the dim twilight, stars reflect off salt; there’s enough light to make out the contrast of black ink on his skin. If her eyes are keen enough to read it, there’s nothing there she doesn’t already know or couldn't guess—she’s seen the chain, the tubing, the muzzle—but she might never have been close enough to a bloodbag to observe all the details. At least not under circumstances like these. Where they have the time and space for the luxury of reactions.

Max resumes his downward licking, peeling the leather trousers from her skin, rolling them over her thighs and knees and calves. It’s the best way to let her know there isn’t a problem, that it doesn’t matter. Accepting that, she goes back to moving, wriggling a little to help him. He has to pull her boots off; then she kicks her trousers from her ankles and lets her legs fall back, opening just enough to let him in between.

He settles there, his shoulders relaxing as the weight of her calves settles over them. Her hair prickles against his lips and rasps on his tongue when he laps over her sex. He used to be good at this, but it was long ago, hundreds if not thousands of days past, and with a very different woman.

Furiosa surges suddenly, her hand clasping the back of his head. He doesn’t at first realize why or what he’s done to provoke it. But as he raises his face, beginning a questioning murmur, her body bucks again. Her sigh is rough, almost forming a request—or a demand—and so, putting his mouth against her, he makes another thoughtful _hmm_. At that she almost melts, the grip of her legs tightening as if to hold the rumble of the noise against her.

Her labia are plump, either naturally or swollen with arousal. He runs the tip of his tongue between them, following a groove as if hoping it’ll show the way. She seems to like it so far, fingertips stroking his scalp through his short hair, digging in as if to urge him and then easing. At first she’s a little dry. He swallows to work up saliva and lets the flat of his tongue sweep over her, closes his lips on her folds and sucks. It’s noisy and it’s messy and as he lets a finger trace the route of his mouth he finds her welling up, sticky and faintly shimmering from wetness.

She tastes—

He doesn’t have words to describe it.

Flooding over his lips, she rises against him and presses hard with her fingers, bringing him even closer. His heart is pounding so loud that he almost misses the sound of her gasp. It sparks something in him— _pride_ —over this, uncertain and slow as it may be, a job with nothing at stake but making her feel good. It matters. It’s _good_.

He begins to push into her with his tongue and her breathing takes on a hungry edge. One finger enters easily, and he slowly turns it, drawing out a vibration that is motion as much as sound. Her entire body becomes a revving engine. Caught up in the acceleration, he tries to work in a second, but there isn’t room; her flesh takes on a tension that doesn’t yield until he pulls back, humming an apology. Her fingers run through his hair, forgiving, and when he starts with withdraw completely she whispers, “No.”

So he remains inside her, barely moving, instead letting her grip and relax and thrust to meet his reach while his mouth grazes over her folds and clit. The first, more sour taste of her skin eases, not that he’d disliked it. But soft-wet and mellow, she’s mouth-watering. He doesn’t think it’s lust—it’s been so long, and there’s so much trouble involved (memories, other things) that he might as well be anesthetized down there—but he does know he’s enjoying this almost as much as she does. And maybe for that reason, that she likes it.

She opens around his finger, loosening, deepening, but he doesn’t take that as an invitation to do anything more. If she wants more she’ll let him know. He feels again that strange, almost alien to him sense of pride and confidence. At being able to give her what she needs. At being able to do this, something he’d have given up hope of if he even remembered to hope for it.

At the way she strokes his head, even now, soft and gentle when her every breath is sand-rough on the edge of a growl, as her clit swells harder and her excitement takes on a saltier taste. Her hips are pistoning, and his pulse seems to throb in time with them, a racing trip to nowhere in the dark, to _everywhere_ , and he remembers faintly how it used to feel when the world itself would move and although his lips are busy something somewhere inside him smiles in sympathy with her.

But she’s not there yet, and the journey isn’t as straight and flat as he’d assumed. Her grip tightens in his hair, just above his neck where it’s a little longer, and he feels the tension of her thighs on either side of his head. He knows she’s going to move. Yet there’s still a visceral shock as she flips them, as he suddenly finds himself on his back and her body dark and panting overhead.

His head comes down on sand, with the edge of the blanket twisted beneath his shoulders, both soft enough surfaces to land on. He’s concerned instead that his fingernails have scratched her when she pivoted, but she doesn’t seem to care about that, either, kneeling over his face and lowering herself with speed that betrays urgency if not impatience. He meets her, gripping her thighs and parting his mouth.

He feels the moment her aggression recenters inward—when the hold on the back of his skull eases and the jerk of her hips becomes shorter, swifter. Her body almost snaps with each stroke. Despite the roughness, she isn’t violent, not with him and not with herself. She just knows what she needs, and knows how to help him give it to her. Yet this might, he realizes, be another reason why she hasn’t gone to any of the other women. To strangers she admired and cared about, who she would have to explain this to.

Max doesn’t need an explanation. To him, this is—more than _nothing,_ if only because it’s different from whatever else they’ve done together, more impractical, more luxurious—but passing. She could be far crueler without damaging anything between them.

But she isn’t cruel, and he trusts her not to damage him. It’s a funny feeling. Amid the physical exertion, the sense of gathering speed and approaching crisis, part of him waits for the flood of adrenaline and stress chemicals and is puzzled by a lighter glow, a mixture of sensation and emotion that might be something like wellbeing.

Something similar is what she chases, her breathing deep and rapid and harsh. Words come out of it, incoherent. But at the peak of her climax she gasps, “ _Chrome!_ ”

Knowing where she comes from, he doesn’t let it take him aback. He keeps giving her the stimulation of his tongue until she slumps, settling some of her weight on his chest as she finds her legs beneath her. His hands move to her waist. Slowly he feels her sliding down, and as her arm goes out to guide her descent he realizes she intends to lie back, so he eases his grip. He couldn’t keep her from where she wanted to go anyway, but he hopes that if she needs it she can feel him guiding her down.

She doesn’t hold herself with satisfaction. Curled on the blanket, her limbs seem at odds, not with the careless disorganization he’s sure she was seeking but instead too carefully, awkwardly held, as if she might jar them by moving too quickly or in the wrong direction. Her hand rests at the base of her abdomen, fingers sometimes twitching but not stroking with any purpose.

It’s not _his_ failure, but it matters to him. That she had been able to take what she needed from him but couldn’t give it to herself.  That they couldn’t fix…

He catches himself; it’s not about fixing. Still, as she begins to gather herself and get up, he raises a hand, fingers spread. Half an offer, half a request. With it he adds his voice, soft and dry as dust, but close enough for her to hear—“Stay?”

She lies back, face turned to the sky. He leans over her, but hesitates there, only the warmth of his breath touching her skin. At last her hand goes up to him, runs the length of his bare chest from his navel to his chin. Her grip on his jaw is firm, and it helps. He stops thinking about why it shouldn’t matter, about how he’ll be leaving in the morning and they won’t get another chance. How _she_ might not get another chance, if he’s the only one she chooses to go to. Her hold clears his mind. He bends his head.

She touches his back, then, as slowly and carefully as he had explored hers. It feels…all right. It feels…safe. He lets her keep doing it as he travels down, taking the path she’d traced on his body in reverse, until he’s back between her legs. He knows her body better this time, understands the amount of licking she wants and suction, knows how tolerant she is of teeth (not very, though she seems to understand if he slips up), knows the angle she likes her clit to be approached from. Her taste still makes his mouth water. With less uncertainty, with more—yes—pride, he brings her towards her second orgasm.

It takes longer. She guides him with the flex of her thighs, with gasps, with the rake of her nails along his skin, but she doesn’t overturn them. The strokes of his licking and her pumping hips aren’t as rapid or sharp.

The slowness, the savoring as if of something sweet, seems to be what brings her to climax. Her breathing harshens in the way he’s become familiar with. “Hey,” she gasps, then “ _Hey,_ ” as if drawing his attention to something he doesn’t already notice.

As if trying to bring him with her.

Her hand has settled in his hair, stroking. He rests with his cheek against her lower belly and they both ride out her orgasm. He feels the tremors reaching up through her body, rhythmic and warm. Ticklish grit brushes the shell of his ear and he realizes she’s brushing out sand. “Hey,” she says, one last time. It’s a tone someone else might use to say _Thank you._ Or a name.

Max could even give her his name now. He feels it rising to his tongue, a syllable that he might just avoid choking on. He feels like he could say it and it might be safe, that nothing would hear it and be reminded of him and renew its pursuit. After all, he’ll be leaving in the morning.

And is it that which keeps him silent. He can be what she needs, but he isn’t hers, and she isn’t his. She doesn’t need his name.

Furiosa seems more peaceful now, if peaceful is ever the right word to describe her. More satisfied. Rested, or ready to rest. Ready to move on tomorrow.

She turns to him as he starts to get up. “If you want—”

Her hand stops above his waist, a warm weight more generous than intrusive. He doesn’t mind her offer, but he shakes his head. The world, even _his_ world, seems to have room for a lot of new things lately, but not this. He can barely even imagine what it would be like to come again—naked, unarmed, safe—and he doesn’t need to know.

“You sure?”

He nods. Thinks about kissing her, but doesn’t. That would communicate the wrong intention. It isn’t what they need.

After a moment, she nods, too.

He passes her the belt and her boots as she gets dressed, but doesn’t help her pull her clothes on. She does the same, carefully handling his jacket with its bulging pockets. She seems still flushed from their activity together, still warm. She drapes her blanket lightly on her shoulders before she walks away.

He watches her go from where he lies on the ground. Flat out. Still. Not too exposed, for now. For once he feels safe, as if nothing awful is going to catch up.

He takes in a deep breath through his mouth, of the eastern wind carrying a tang of salt. It washes over his tongue, faint but strong enough to taste, something richer than dust.


End file.
